Stick weaving in Helen's garden

It's near the end of winter and we pruned and wove the mulberry just in time before new growth. Some inspiration from seeing Patrick Dougherty's work at the Children's Museum in Portland Oregon, but more modest objectives. From this angle you can see the tree is hard pruned and bare, but you can't see the way the tunnel behind the Queen of Liberty (beanie and wool dress for winter) continues to be shaped up.

Photo below: the vertical sticks of mulberry are hard, last year's prunings. They are fixed to the gate by wire. We needed to lift the height of gates and fence in the front yard to contain our precocious promiscuous poodle.
The lateral sticks of mulberry were pruned two days before these photos and Helen has woven them together. They are at this point flexible, will dry hard.

a work in progress

and another work in progress, by Xiao Ran (Mike) the Beijing WWOOFer.

Fruity creatures with wet t-shirts.

In last blog entry I set out how we assembled sacks of good soil to grow strawberries hanging from bags. The bags were woven plastic produce bags which would would break up in sunlight.

So for that and aesthetic reasons, I have now dressed these creature in T-shirts. And poured them tea.

And given them old chairs to sit upon, just a little closer to the sun in winter, further from chill ground, snails and rabbits. Easy to check and manage. With 90 or 100mm -> 50mm reducers on the top of centre PVC pipe to increase rain catchment and facilitate watering and adding feeds. Soil made from compost, cocopeat (fine chopped coconut husk), mulched horse manure, volcanic rock dust, plus compost tea (a bin with lid in the garden to which we add water, weeds, manures, volcanic rock dust, seaweed extract, etc.). Some other strawberries in the garden are already flowering. hopefully fruit by November. To add to passionfruit currently cropping heavily.

I added some more plants. I have to say there is a big difference between the sensation of gashing a hole in a produce bag compared with plunging a knife into a well-filled ladies T-shirt and hauling out viscera to make way for an implant. I look over my shoulder for passers-by.

As a system this is easy to replicate. Just adding more chairs. Kind of the way easy for Iran or others to add extra centrifuges to uranium enrichment plants. Kind of.

Or if I can find an old merry-go-round at the recycling I will have a perfect device for getting the sun onto all sides of these bags if I train the poodle to run in circles pulling it. Only needs a lamb chop on a fishing pole in front of him perhaps. But I must remember complex things fail....

I will try hanging them in strong fishing net from tree branches. Where they can spin in the breeze. Without a poodle. Stay tuned.

Here they are. Three bags full:

Click on picture to enlarge. Little sticks in the holes are to discourage the holes from movement.

strawberries by the bag

http://www.floridavegetablegarden.com/?p=902

I saw this on the web, via pinterest...
and realised it would be a good idea for us.

So with my gardener Renay this morning we made three bags today. We used produce bags, modest size. Even so with damp soil material inside they each way about 25kg (60lbs) at least. So not sure how we will place them in the end. Had had in mind stringing them along a cable, but it will be a heavy load for any cable system.

We are using produce bags which will decompose in sunlight. So after the soil and plants settle, and when they are in eventual place and not going to be moved again, we will put skirts of some fabric around them. We could use hessian but it's very expensive and we can find something bright at a charity shop.

I had learned from the discussion of other people's mistakes and adjustments at link. 
The internet is wonderful when people write openly about their oopses.

So we did this:   [click on any picture to enlarge all)

from experience I knew holes should be small

1. put about 20cm of cocopeat, expanded in water, in bottom of bag. I put this moisture retaining medium at the bottom of the bag, with no supplements added, so that  [a] the plant roots would in the first instance chase nutrients higher in the bag and [b] as nutrients wash down over time, this cocopeat layer will hold nutrients and not get toxically overloaded.
2. placed a 50mm pvc pipe in the bag, with cap on bottom, one small hole in bottom three small holes up the pipe. An adaptor from 50mm to 100mm on top to make it easier to add water Tamped the bottom into the peat layer, to make stable.
3. put had put the leg of an old pair of tracksuit pants around the pipe to slow water travel and prevent blockage of holes by roots. This task seemed to excite Renay.
4. made a mix of the following: 
1. cocopeat with water added, also compost tea from our compost tea bin in garden which accepts weeds, manures, volcanic rock dust, etc,
2. horse manure — which I am able to get from a source where it has been mulched
3. cow manure — complexity requires

   

   Easy to cut pvc pipe.

   
   

   more stuff
4. compost from our garden composter

1. We filled the bag with this mix, tamping down lightly. 
2. We added some volcanic rock dust at intervals. 
3. Sewed up the top with baling twine, as comes with the bags of horse manure.
4. Cut a total of six holes in each bag for strawberry plants. 
5. Planted the strawberry plants, all of which are runners from our strawberry patches.

The six small cuts for plants were made as follows:the cuts about 4cm + 4cm, slightly upwards to the centre, so when you pull the bag fabric it opens a little lip space and soil does not fall out.

• three cuts 120 degrees (evenly spaced) around towards the top at the shoulder level of the soil in the bag... the soil may settle, either the plant will grow out happily or we open the bag and add more soil.
• three cuts a bit further down, same 120 degree interval, offset.

These bags need to settle and the strawberries need to start growing in place now. July here is midwinter, no frost here, but close to freezing at the moment. I have places the bags in a row facing sun in a microclimate location with good sunlight. They are sitting on the ground with a half bag of manure front and back for stability. And a mirror behind to add warmth and light to the back of the bags. As the sun moves, the light shifts from bag to bag and also warms the manure bag.

  Three strawberry vertical garden bags in a row, mirror behind. 

When the soil is settled and roots developed and these are at their final destination, we will find smart tight skirts for these bags, both for aesthetics and also because the bags will disintegrate in sunlight over time. 

In any case, these are things for only one season or so, the soil will, as with soil in pots, need refreshing. 

Not hard to do. As runners develop from these six plants I may make holes for them or begin new bags, we shall see...

Now to find an old bench or such to rest them on, away from ground pests. Here we will also need defences from blackbirds and bowerbirds, for which a number of chopstick sized sticks coming out diagonally at the top with reflective scare tape dangling. Or maybe a net.

Mosaics in sand, work of wwoofer Mike

Everyone with a house will have some corner garden, under a roof line, where it is difficult to get anything to grow.

Helen had two next spaces like that. Also Helen was concerned not to have wet garden growth up against the house, encouraging pests including termites.

So with a plan, we assembled our collected tiles and broken plates and we entrusted the project to Xiao Ran (Mike), wwoofer from Beijing, after some basic training in mosaic work.

We knew Mike was clever, we knew he had never done a project like this before. The results are wonderful.

Mosaic work is interesting because it allows you to play with shapes and forms. It allows you to smash plates. You shift into a creative mind-space. As design develops, you begin to see more and more what is possible. And Mike's creative mind ran and ran. Imagination! Discipline. Hard work too. Place pieces, step back, look, have a coffee, look again, pick up most of it, rearrange, and then again...

This work is not concreted in. Earth and weeds were removed to a depth of about 75mm (3in), cloth put down flat on the ground as a weed barrier, then sand... and the mosaic pieces laid on top. Rain will alter this, as will wind, birds and lizards. Really part of the garden, subject to change.

Thanks Mike! 

click on any photo to enlarge all

 We used a lot of tiles but we still have some more.

in the middle, a few harvested passionfruit and macadamia nuts. 

Photography offers some opportunities like mosaic work, assembling forms.

In the USA and Mexico

Berkeley sculpture garden

I was blogging in May and June in north America, two blogs whose titles are self-explanatory:

http://seattletosanfrancisco2015.blogspot.com.au/
and
http://ongoingtomexico.blogspot.com.au/

There is more of garden relevance and much inspiration for us recorded in the USA blog and this link will take you to blog entries that I tagged with the label 'garden'.

In Seattle, San Francisco and Berkeley we saw a lot of footpath gardens. In Berkeley a very special sculpture garden. Examples of these at link.

Only in San Francisco did we meet a pig on a leash.

These following two pictures in 82nd St, Greenwood, Seattle, mid-May 2015.

Meanwhile, at Helen's house

Although Helen's soil is volcanic in origin, Helen has installed two 'WormFeast' mini-and-underground composters, as described in yesterday's post. Whether, given the quality of her soil, worms will rush in to the WormFeast or rush out to the garden, we shall see. Certainly in digging to install them there were lots of worms relocated from the soil!

Helen has also built a light frame for a thornless blackberry to climb on, removed from poor performance in a dark location in the back to a brighter location in the front.

The structure being built using hard last-winter prunings from the mulberry also–for the top structure –some long whippy green branches just cut to expose the Queen of Liberty, who remains in glory, flying from the mulberry.

A WormFeast discreetly lurks at one end of a swale above that little garden. Swales are very important on this sloping ground, to catch water and get it underground, not run-off to the street.
There was earlier discussion of swales here.

while further up, near the house, the second WormFeast being installed on a slope above a lively garden with apple, citrus and herbs (and of course volunteer tomatoes):

with a live mulch of thyme, dug from where it's running rampant, nearby

Meanwhile in the backyard, the chooks (non-gender generic Australian word for chicken, rooster, hen, etc) are in jungle heaven, having been moved from their well-worn pen at Dennis's house to four months wild growth at their beach jungle at Helen's.

Welcome to the backyard, the passionfruit crop has been big for months.

the three hens came here first when bought at auction end of October 2014. You can see the growth inside the fence and inside their house since they left... in January?

The Livorno (Leghorn) who is the only one laying so far made a huge song and dance setting up her space in the nest box (right hand end of the house) and producing a fine egg straight away. 

These are really creature of the jungle and so happy here in this old vegetable garden run wild. 

Meanwhile I will plant seed in their run at my house to refresh it for their return in some weeks.

innovation, adaptations, making space and building soil.

My place is getting crowded. One delightful consequence is the increase in bird life.

As I typed at the computer yesterday, a Lewin's Honeyeater appeared at the window, lit by early morning sunlight.

Lewin's Honeyeater

For a while back there extreme heat and heavy rainstorms seemed to knock out the small bird populations, but I'm pleased to report but have no photo of my own that red-browed finches are flitting through the undergrowth. This photo is from birdsinbackyards.com.au

Red-browed finch. This wonderful photo from birdsinbackyards catches the beauty
 but does not really convey the fleeting flitting way they rush through the scrub.

So...    to introduce four innovations in my garden:

[1] Burying logs in garden, building log mounds — hugelkultur

I've reported on this before but this is the 'Garden Makeover' story from later... This is what has happened since. Systems working!

I discovered last year that a lot of people had been using this German term to describe something interesting they had been doing in their gardens: building mounds or filling holes with wood and then adding earth and growing on that.

As recorded elsewhere, I have been using a mulcher which reduces prunings less than 75cm (3 inches) to mulch. This of course left me with the limbs of diameter greater than 75cm, or less if bent. Discovering this buried-wood concept was directly relevant, potentially was not lumbered with a burden but in possession of assets.

I have so far made three of these gardens, in each case using mounding to achieve particular value in a location.

The first location was a scruffy space between my front garden and the road, in deep shade. Early last winter as recorded here, I filled this space with logs, over a metre and a half high, then using a chainsaw to chop and chop it down till very dense, adding seven bags of horse manure (roadside sales, $3 or 4 each for a produce bagful), lots of water, covered it all with a big tarpaulin. I then left it for months. I recorded the unveiling in January in this blog entry. I can now report that the garden is prospering. Here is a photo from recent days:

Raised hugelkulture bed in deep shade, not generally suitable for food crops
very nice place for elements of rainforest and a privacy screen from the road ..
.. and for a Monstera deliciosa, here in flower, the fruit of which needs careful handling.

The second location was also in the front yard, as also described in that February blog entry, where I wrote: "By winter I hope the passionfruit has climbed well up the trees to catch the light."

Here is the current happy situation, beginning of April:

The passionfruit climbs from the right towards the left on a piece of long-dead Cypress,
then heading back to the right towards the canopy.

That bed was given less time to mature before planting as a summer endeavour.

Later in summer I set up a smaller bed, trying to grab a bit of unused ground and lift the plants towards the light.

Initially bits of wood and manures and compost, with black plastic and weight, then adding more manure, mixed with and topping with coco peat, a sustainable alternative to peat moss, retaining both water and air and as a high carbon material, a weed retarding mulch. Here planted initially with radishes, which grow quickly, later planted with peas and rocket as weather cooled in the last week.

February: woody pruning scraps plus manures and compost, here wetted and under black plastic, held down by an old pallet.

March: covers off, extra manure and compost and coco peat and radishes taking off.
Net protection from blackbirds and bowerbirds and others.

[2] New approaches to worm farming, 
compost delivery and water supply below ground.

We discovered these 'Worm Feast' devices at ALDI and we bought two for each house. This video is informative, but we did not get the whole kit, nor had I seen this video before doing this blog entry. It's a good video about a good system and the value of worms.

I placed one among fruit and vegetables in the front garden. This has also been an extremely dry spot in the summer heat, so I added a feature to inject water deep into the soil, using an old terracotta pipe 1.2 metres (4') long. 

Worm and compost pot on left, water injector on the right dumping water one metre down in porous soil.
There is a young blood orange partly visible at the top of the photo. It has responded vigorously.. not yet to the composter/worm pot, but to the new reliability of deep water. I added lots of volcanic rock dust to both devices.

Closed systems sold as 'worm farms' I prefer to describe as 'worm prisons'. They are suitable for apartment balconies but to my mind different thinking is sensible in a garden. Worms travel vast distances through soil, I want to have situations in my garden that worms will travel from far away to feast on. Here's a wonderful educational resource, with research for schools which farmers should think about. The tunnels they build, the droppings and bacteria they leave behind, are the most valuable things in any garden.

We have big black compost bins for reducing kitchen waste but mine has been a hostile place for worms over summer because it has been very very hot. This has reduced organic material quickly, but worms don't want to be there. The 'worm feast' introduces the idea of putting a much smaller receptacle for waste deep in the soil at relatively stable temperature, well open to the soil for worms to arrive and depart. The written literature with the Worm Feast said that from time to time I should empty the contents elsewhere in the garden but I think I'd prefer to move the Worm Feast and leave the rich content right where it is, having been put in a good place to begin. But no rush. And if it happens that things grow well close to it, then bring the gardening to it. 

I placed a second Worm Feast in a rhubarb garden, and added a 100mm (4") PVC pipe close by, to inject water deep in the soil. As with the first Worm Feast, I used my corkscrew-like compost mixing tool to draw up some worms from the bottom of my main composter to add to the new device. As these are open systems we need to get the feeding right so worms don't run away. Not rocket science, more important than rocket science.

I had to use tape to hold it together when assembled.
See all the holes for worms to wander in and out.
Also please note that it is not bigger than a wheelbarrow, 
not bigger than a chook house either—compare with the glove  :-)

3 metres (10') of 100mm (4") PVC pipe cut with angle grinder.
I drilled some holes low down
and put a cap on the bottom so the water would not run through too fast.

Rock dust, seaweed and similar organic feed can be added to the water.

This is right next to a path, easy to load in the compost material

I have lifted a quantity of compost from down in the bin visible on the right.
Half the compost and worms fell back in before I took the photo.. :-)
The ingredients for the compost are mainly kitchen materials:
four parts carbon (brown, paper, etc) to one part nitrogen (green, protein, etc)
plus water, air, heat. I add manures from chickens and roadside purchase,
preferring to compost manures to eliminate pathogens
and use them for building humus, not as a raw mineral feed.
My definition of 'organic' is not about sprays and fancy foods,
but ensuring that there is more soil humus and nutrients at the end of the year than at the beginning.

Here is the starter material for the Worm Feast.

Now loaded and ready to cap.

So... learning from all that... I think that the label Worm Feast is narrow, we are doing some composting and seeking to involve worms in that. And I've added devices for getting water underground. So I think I will call mine 'Imposters', for in-ground-water-injection-and-compost-development.

I had had to buy 3 metres of PVC pipe as you see. I had also had in my front yard a huge pot which had been thrown out years ago by someone when the pretty image of peonies on the outside began to fall off. Narrowing towards the bottom it would not be suitable for compost. So after using the angle grinder to cut a slot in the bottom sort of like a piggy-bank coin hole, it has become my water injector. Alongside it I have placed three pieces of PVC pipe, putting substantial holes in the side of them for traffic between. Alone one of these pipes would not really provide a powerful base for worm attraction but together, and with manure in the soil between, they will, I hope be formidable. This is next to, just uphill on a tiny slope from, my asparagus field. Since taking this photo I have planted peas and rocket and it has rained and the rocket it rocketing in a matter of days!

IMPOSTER SYSTEM!!
The big pot is for water injection, buried half a metre in the ground.
The three compost-worm-tubes have caps which are easily removed.
Volcanic rock dust and seaweed plant food added to both systems. 

[3] Elevated seedling starter system, evolving into...

I've build a platform in a warm garden space and placing boards on the perimeter, then placed black plastic sheet on the platform and over the edge to make a pond about 70cm deep. This too deep to put pots in, so pots are placed on pieces of board in the water. The greater depth of water provides thermal inertia and evaporation does not quickly remove water from the pot bases.

I began with seed, some good results, some failed results were begun while it was too hot and before I had this moisture-maintaining system set up. 

I've quickly become conscious that in a home garden there is only a small need for seedling raising and I have already begun to evolve this system into a hanging strawberry garden too.

So this is a system just a couple of weeks old:

Water in trough.
Pots on bits of wood to get them up from too deep while maintaining a good mass of water.
Fill (by hand or rain) till water runs over the back corner and down into other garden area.
Seaweed nutrient and volcanic rock dust in water as well as pot mix. 

[4] Root vegetable in pots

I discovered on Pinterest a lot of people advocating growing root vegetable in containers to make harvesting easy. Such as...

I have taken pots and largely buried them in the ground. Tapered pots, easy to get out and easy to empty. 

I have begun adding potatoes (with the potatoes you begin with a little soil and build the soil as the plants grow) and carrots from seed. We shall see. An inexpensive experiment. Pots $3 each.

Part buried in the garden, they are unobtrusive.
some weedmat in the bottom to keep tree and other roots from invading.

Early days.
Carrots in two near pots, coco peat on surface.
Potatoes in further pots, soil and coco peat to be added as plants grow.
As you bury the potato stems, new roots and tubers develop.